Traumatized children taken from parents; migrant surge forces splits in Border Patrol facilities

The Department of Homeland Security is separating children from their families in Border Patrol facilities in Texas, saying the surge of migrants is too overwhelming to accommodate them all.

Children as young as 8, who are supposed to be kept in cells with their parents, are instead being put into cells with unaccompanied children, according to a special monitor appointed by a federal judge to oversee border detention. The monitor said some children younger than 8 also may have been separated.

Dr. Paul H. Wise, the monitor, said the result is trauma inflicted on children who have just survived the treacherous journey to the U.S.

“Interviews with separated children in this age group revealed significant emotional distress related to separation, including sustained crying and disorientation, particularly due to the child’s uncertainty as to the location of the parent and when, and even if, child and parent might be reunited,” Dr. Wise said in his report to U.S. District Court Judge Dolly M. Gee.

He didn’t disclose how many children have been separated but said the situation has erased much of the good work of Customs and Border Protection over the past year to improve conditions for children at the border facilities.

“However, these efforts to provide trauma-informed care and a child-friendly environment have been rendered irrelevant for children who have been separated from their parents while in custody,” he said.

Family separation has been a touchy area for Homeland Security since the Trump administration when the government tried to stop a surge of migrant families by prosecuting parents for illegal entry, a misdemeanor. The criminal justice system doesn’t have family jails, so the children were placed in the care of the Department of Health and Human Services.

The government had no way of reuniting the families once the parents completed their criminal cases, often after just a couple of days with a guilty plea and a sentence of time served. Thousands of children were separated.

The current border situation is different. The special monitor said families are housed at the same facility and are reunited once they leave.

The surge of migrants means they are regularly separated while in holding cells, with the children in child-only rooms.

The separations nod to safety, particularly when older teenage boys are apprehended with their mothers.

“This is done so that teenage boys are not held in the same pods with large numbers of what are often very young women,” Dr. Wise said.

The Border Patrol said it didn’t separate children younger than 8, though Dr. Wise reported that advocates for the children say it has happened.

Homeland Security said in a statement to The Washington Times that it does try to limit separation. 

“Families belong together, and we have prioritized keeping families together at every step of the process and have policies and protocols to that end,” the department said. “Due to legal restrictions or operational considerations, there are instances where family members will not be processed or detained together. We are always reviewing our policies and processes to ensure they are lawful, humane and consistent with our core values including a commitment to protecting and preserving family unity.”

A lawyer who represents the children did not respond to an inquiry for this report. 

Judge Gee oversees what is known as the Flores settlement, a 1997 agreement that sets standards for the handling of illegal immigrant children.

The agreement initially applied only to unaccompanied alien children. Those who showed up at the border without parents were considered the most vulnerable victims in the immigration debate.

In 2015, Judge Gee expanded the settlement to apply to children who came to the U.S. with their parents. That ruling, which effectively limited the time families could be detained and led to catch-and-release, helped spark the run of families that has upended the usual immigration patterns since 2016.

The ruling also set up Judge Gee as the arbiter of detention conditions, and she has ordered routine monitoring of events. Dr. Wise is one of those reporting back.

Among other findings in his report filed last week:

• CBP didn’t have enough sleeping mats for the migrants.

• Hundreds of children were held in border facilities for more than 72 hours in June and July. Sixteen were in custody for more than two weeks, including one who came as an unaccompanied child.

• CBP shifted facilities in south Texas during the early part of the review period, leaving it with too few spaces, particularly for fathers who came with children.

• Children ages 2 to 5 were fed adult meals.

On the plus side, the monitor said CBP has been expanding its “caregiver” program to help keep the children occupied, and the children said they felt safe in the facilities.

Those marked improvements help reduce children’s trauma from the journey and arrests, but separations reverse much of that work, the monitor said.

“None of the trauma-informed steps CBP has implemented over the past year has the ability to counteract the deleterious impact of separating a child from a parent while in a CBP facility,” Dr. Wise said.

He said CBP needs to improve medical decision-making for care delivered to the children in border facilities.

He pointed to the death in May of Anadith Reyes Alvarez, 8, from Panama. She had been held for nine days with her family in Harlingen, Texas, and had sickle cell anemia and other conditions.

Anadith was suffering from the flu. Her mother repeatedly tried to get treatment for her daughter but was refused.

The Associated Press reported that a study of the girl’s case concluded that her death was “a preventable tragedy” resulting from poor decision-making and a nurse’s failure to get her symptoms checked by a doctor.